Superintendent Ruth Ellen Vaughn Outlines Strategic Plan and Budget Priorities for Future of Our School District

Sunday, January 14, 2018

“It’s a fact,” says Superintendent Ruth Ellen Vaughn, “Excellence is in sight!” Good news for Farmington residents, and even better news for our students! Superintendent Vaughn began a presentation of the school budget for the town and Budget Committee on December 20 with those words. Speaking to a packed house, and supported by school board members, and administrators, Ruth Ellen outlined the results of a recent survey taken in order to define the priorities of our town citizens and what direction they wanted the school district to take. The survey was the first part of the development of a strategic plan for improvement. The school board gave Superintendent Vaughn a charge of putting the Farmington School District in the top ten schools in New Hampshire in the next ten years. “I take that charge very seriously,” Vaughn states often.

The broad goals for the district’s Strategic Innovation Plan come from the priorities uncovered by the survey. And her use of the word “fact” had double meaning. More correctly spelled “FAC3T” is an anagram for Facilities, Achievement, Curriculum, Community Communication, and Technology, the categories of district improvement included in the district’s Strategic Innovation Plan. It’s both clever and powerful and the district is not shying away from the challenge. The details of the plan, outlined below, form the basis for the school budget, which has been kept lower than last year’s school budget.

Facilities

Buildings to be in good repair with all systems on a regular maintenance and replacement schedule by 2027.

Roofs replaced for HWMS by 2023; FHS by 2025; plan for VVCS by 2027.

Access road to FHS and VVCS for secondary egress to be in place by 2027.

Achievement

Portrait of a Farmington Graduate complete by late 2018.

Assessment scores place Farmington students in the top 50% of students on the NH State assessments by 2022 and the top 10% by 2027.